Obligatory "YOU CAN CHECK IN, BUT YOU CAN'T CHECK OUT!"
All her bones are decaying and her organs are all rancid and her blood is malignant as slime...
Hospital Massacre (also known as X-Ray and more rarely as Ward 13) is a 1982 Slasher Movie, directed by Boaz Davidson for The Cannon Group.
On Valentine's Day in 1961, a little girl named Susan Jeremy, after being left a Valentine by nerdy classmate Harold Rusk, crumpled it up and mocked Harold along with her friend David, who Harold (who had been watching the two from outside Susan‘s house note ) killed in a fit of rage by somehow impaling him on a hatstand while Susan was in the kitchen getting cake.
Exactly nineteen years later, Susan (by now divorced from her husband Tom, with a daughter named Eva, and a fiancé named Jack) is stopping by a hospital to pick up the results of a routine checkup required by her new job, but finds herself being forced to stay overnight by the staff after a man in surgical attire secretly murders her personal physician and tampers with her file. As the masked man starts murdering medical personnel and appears to be zeroing in on her, Susan realizes something is horribly wrong, but her concerns are ignored by everyone except an ever so helpful intern named Harry, who begins trying to help her escape the hospital, which is quickly becoming a bloodbath...
The doctors say this film shows symptoms of the following:
- The Alcoholic: Hal, a lecherous drunk prone to wandering the halls.
- Attempted Rape: Hal tries forcing himself on Susan.
- Ax-Crazy: Harold is an unhinged killer who gleefully goes about massacring an entire hospital staff.
- Bandage Mummy: Susan stumbles upon a trio of patients like this while trying to escape from the murderous doctor.
- Bedlam House: The hospital really gives off this vibe.
- Big Damn Heroes: In the loosest sense possible. Right when Harold is going to cut Susan's heart out, her roommates randomly wander into the room, distracting Harold long enough for Susan to grab a knife off the operating tray and stab him with it.
- Cast as a Mask: Don Grenough portrayed Harold in his surgical attire.
- Chainsaw Good: How Jack meets his end.
- Chase Scene: Near the end, a long one between Susan and Harold occurs.
- Cowboy: There's apparently one with the mumps in Ward 11.
- Cover Drop: Harold about to cut Susan's heart out.
- Curtain Camouflage: Used by both Susan and Harold.
- Deadly Doctor: Harold, since he actually is employed by the hospital.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Used for flashbacks to the opening and the adult Harold's introduction after The Reveal.
- Disney Villain Death: Ultimately, despite being stabbed in the side and immolated Harold finally meets his death after falling off the roof of the hospital.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Harold's entire motive for attempt to ruin Susan's life and murdering numerous hospital staff is that she rejected his valentine when they were kids.
- Dramatic Unmask: Susan ripping off Harold's surgical mask.
- Dye Hard: In-Universe Susan was blond as a child, but is brunette as an adult.
- Enfant Terrible: Young Harold, as David finds out the hard way via impalement on a hatstand.
- Evil Elevator: Harold messes with it the first time Susan uses it.
- Everyone Is a Suspect: The amount of Red Herrings is a bit ridiculous.
- Expy: Harold, and Mr. Randles from The Last Slumber Party.
- Fanservice: In the early eighties, a routine checkup meant getting completely nude.
- Freak Out: Harold experiences one after killing the janitor.
- Group Hug: Susan, Tom and Eva in the end.
- Harmful to Minors: Young Susan finds David's dead body.
- Hollywood Acid: The janitor gets his face dunked in a sink that was full of it... for some reason.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: David on a hat stand, and Doctor Beam getting a metal spike... thing through the neck.
- Infernal Retaliation: Attempted by Harold, but Susan moves out of the way, so he falls off the roof.
- Informed Flaw: According to Susan, Tom is an asshole.
- It Was Here, I Swear!: When Jack's head disappears from the hat box Harold left for Susan.
- Jerkass: Hal, and one of the old ladies Susan is forced to share a room with.
- Karma Houdini: You'd expect Hal to be killed off, but nope.
- Kids Are Cruel: Susan and David making fun of him was what caused Harold. Also applies to Harold himself, given that he murders David over it.
- Man on Fire: Susan uses her lighter to set Harold on fire, after spilling chemicals on him.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Young Susan getting slices of cake for herself and David; there's intense music, gratuitous zoom-ins, she takes the biggest knife available, and then viciously hacks the cake completely in half with it.
- Noodle Implements: Why is there a screwdriver in a tray of medical tools?
- Noodle Incident: Jack mentions a patient apparently ran amok in the hospital the previous year.
- Off with His Head!: Jack's death.
- Ominous Latin Chanting: Used so much it's practically Harold's Leitmotif.
- Once is Not Enough: Getting knifed and then whacked with a pipe just slows Harold down.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: The janitor finding Doctor Jacobs's body in a cabinet, and Nancy just happens to enter the lab as Suzy's body falls out of closet.
- Pipe Pain: Susan fends Harold off with one.
- Playing with Syringes: Nurse Kitty's death.
- Re-Cut: The version titled X-Ray apparently had a ridiculous twelve minutes lopped off. Better artwork, though.
- The Reveal:
If the name wasn't a dead giveaway, Harry is Harold. - Riddle for the Ages: What the Hell is wrong with the patient Harold switched Susan's test results with?
- Shadow Discretion Shot: Jack's death.
- Shout-Out: To My Bloody Valentine, in the form of a trio of hospital employees wearing Harry Warden-esque gas masks.
- Slasher Smile: Done by Harold after he kills David, coupled with a Kubrick Stare.
- Statuesque Stunner: Nurse Dora, who is roughly a head taller than everyone else in the film.
- 13 Is Unlucky: Alternate title Ward 13.
- Title In: Susan's House - 1961 and 19 Years Later.
- Two First Names: Susan Jeremy.
- Valentine's Day Violence: Both the prologue and the film itself are set on a violent Valentine's Days nineteen years apart.
- In the prologue, Susan turns down Harold on Valentine's Day, and mocks him with her friend David. Harold then breaks into her house and impales David on a hatstand.
- In the movie itself, Susan stops by a hospital on Valentine's Day, where Harold kills multiple people, including her boyfriend Jack (whose head he presents to her in a box) and tries to kill her.
- Wall Slump: Doctor Beam's death.
- Would Hurt a Child: Harold killing David, though they were roughly the same age at the time.
